TRANSLATING POETRY @ THE AMERICAN ACADEMY IN ROME

C'è più onore in tradire che in essere fedeli a metà.(There is more honor in betrayal than in being half faithful.)

-from Una Sera Come Tante / An Evening Like So Many Others by Giovanni Guidici (1924-2011)

A two-day series of readings and conversations at the American Academy in Rome, intended to explore current approaches to translating Polish and Italian poetry into English, and the translation of English-language poetry into Italian.

William B. Hart Poet-in-Residence Robert Hass, the leading American translator of Polish Nobel Laureate poet Czesław Miłosz, will be joined by Polish poets Julia Hartwig and Adam Zagajewski and American translator Clare Cavanagh in a bilingual reading and discussion (in English) of work by poets including Hartwig, Miłosz, Zbigniew Herbert, Wisława Szymborska, and Zagajewski.

The second day's events will be based on Geoffrey Brock's new anthology The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012). Italian poets including Edoardo Albinati, Antonella Anedda, Franco Buffoni, Patrizia Cavalli, Franco Loi, Valerio Magrelli, Lucio Mariani, Maria Luisa Spaziani, and AAR Italian Affiliated Fellows Massimo Gezzi and Guido Mazzoni will read from their own work, as well as from work by poets including D'Annunzio, Montale, Pavese, Pasolini, Saba, Ungaretti, and Zanzotto. English translations will be read by translators including Damiano Abeni, Sarah Arvio, FAAR '04, Geoffrey Brock, Moira Egan, Jamie McKendrick, Anthony Molino and Susan Stewart; Jennifer Scappettone,FAAR '11, will read from her translations of Amelia Rosselli. There will also be a bilingual reading of poems by Byron, Donne, Anne Carson, Seamus Heaney, Keats, Shakespeare and others as they have been translated by Italian poets, and public conversations, both about translating from Italian into English and about translating from English into Italian.

Seating on a first-come, first-served basis. Simultaneous translation will be available. This program is made possible through generous gifts by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Price and Mrs. Nancy M. O'Boyle and with the support of the Casa delle Letterature di Roma Capitale, Istituto Polacco di Roma, and the Polish Book Institute. Collaborating institutions include the Keats-Shelley House and the British Council.